The Spellcaster's Heiress -- Chapter 10

 By Christopher Leeson

FROM DYAN'S JOURNAL

The old struggle continues; I see no end to it.  All that has changed is the manner of the fight.  Over the last few months, I've had to learn to use different weapons, and I'm still learning. 

There was a time when I lived in a different kind of world, when the Fyana would start upon a raid with no more than a kit of bread and a skin of wine.  After the first night, we very well might be dependent on the generously of supporters along the way for even our most basic provender.  Sometimes we had no recourse but to tighten our belts and chew a plug of bitterroot to slay the gnaw of our appetites, trusting that our excitement would give sufficient strength to our limbs at the crucial hour.

We experienced misery and fear in great quantity, but the most fearful in the land were not the Fyana but its supporters.   The loyal, generous people who opened their hearts and homes to us did so at an awful risk.  Too often we would learn that a yeoman's family had been massacred by a militia patrol for having given us aid.

Occasionally, the peril would come down on their heads even while the warrior was lodged with them.  More than one Fyana swordsman had laid down his life on the very threshold of his host.  And when the victorious militia tramped over his dying body, the family sheltering behind him would be put to the sword...

*****
The Speaker in the Shadows

The Spellcaster's Heiress -- Chapter 9

By Christopher Leeson

FROM DYAN'S JOURNAL


Once I asked Cawdour why he supposed that the chancellor had been able to seize so much power with so little effort.

"The secret of Harouck's success," Cawdour told me, "is a thing that goes beyond his command of sorcery.  He is a consummate politician.  Sorcery combined with worldly self-interest weaves a dangerous spell.

"Most magicians are impractical dreamers.  Try as they might, few of them amount to anything, as men rate achievement.  The stories of accomplished spellcasters living meanly in forest huts are sometimes true.  But while most wizards scorn the tedium of bureaucratic labor, Harouck thrived on it.  He put both his political savvy and his sorcery to work for the fulfillment of his ambitions.

"Before long, those who stood in his way were being dismissed on charges of corruption, or were taking ill and retiring before their time.  Whenever he confronted a more skilled politician, he relied on sorcery; when confronted by a superior wizard, he used political trickery.

“Harouck eventually rose to First Secretary to the chancellor.  Hardly had the old king died before his superior was being confronted by accusations.  Nothing was proven, but Harouck had a pivotal ally in Prince Cathmor, the heir apparent.

"For years, he had been flattering the youth for his devotion to a dissolute lifestyle and, whenever he could, enabled it.  The old chancellor too much reminded the prince of his own stern father.  He was only too ready to advance a crony whom he supposed would continue on as a servile underling.

"Harouck wasted no time in putting his own minions into power, so that the whole government soon became naught but an echo of one upstart's iron will.  Only a strong king could have checked him, but I do fear that had King Cathmor become Harouck's opponent, he would have fared no better than any other enemy of the new chancellor.  But the young king is absolutely surpassed in the politics of power.  The sad truth is that he has always lusted for the empty pomp of kingship, not its taxing duties. 

"Harouck reigns as a virtual regent while the king dwells in a countryside palace.  Instead of consulting with his ministers, Cathmor is surrounded by mistresses and sporting companions. No doubt Harouck has selected the king's bodyguards and watches him with spies that report his every word and deed.

“A usurper craves popularity until his power is unchallengeable, and never doubt that Harouck is popular.  He has robbed the exchequer to buy favor with the landless masses, men without shops or trades.  The more wastrel they are, the more likely they will be to cheer the munificent statesman for the dole he bestows. He is beloved by the drunkard, the gambler, and the thief in the streets.

"The military distrusted him from the first day, of course, but the chancellor has used bribery and blackmail to retire the most troublesome of the commanders.  Every year he has further reduced the size of the army.  Its last units now languish in scattered barracks, while militiamen, many of them foreign hirelings, have been empowered to secure the internal order.
  
"They carry out orders that knights of the realm, men of the people, would not have countenanced.  Harouck's sorry militia could not win a war, of course, but they are effective enough in keeping down an unarmed population.

“Remember this, Rodin:  a nation is rarely brought low by invaders from without.  Foreign oppression, in fact, unites a people in resistance, forges their love of country into a mighty weapon, leading to popular revolt and a robust revival.
  
"But native-born despotism is a demoralizing thing; it puts each subject at the throat of every other. Each one clambers over one another to snatch for the oppressor's handouts.  The allure of gain is ever corrosive to the love of country.  Harouck has won over many who should have known better.  It is not just the wastrel, but also many a person of rank and office, who will welcome in a tyranny for no more than the promise of a few favors.”

*****

The Liar's Smile

The Family Tree

By Christopher Leeson

Revised 08-01-19
 

John Roth's grandmother had been a wild flapper during the Roaring Twenties -- an orphan born out of wedlock to a mysterious great-grandmother, one whose name was not known.  John often wondered about his roots in childhood and as a young man worked hard in his spare time to fill in what was a short and very sketchy family tree.

John studied genealogy books to learn how to research difficult cases such as his.  He eventually went to the town where his grandmother had grown up in an orphanage, but they would tell him nothing until he bribed an official.  What he found out from the sealed records was that the woman who had left his grandmother Rose at the foundling home in 1906 had called herself "Maddie Smith" and had given a San Francisco address.
  
The city was close by, and so he soon traced the address to the old Barbary Coast district.  There John discovered that the original building at the address was still standing, preserved as a historical site.  But anyone would have realized that this was no home -- it was a place of work.  The sign outside revealed that it had been a high-toned bordello whose operation had ended with the 1906 earthquake.  It was not currently open for tours, being temporarily shut down for repairs.  After a visit to the managing office at city hall, John received permission to explore the edifice, accompanied by a tour guide who knew the very property well. 
 
The edifice that had been called home by Maddie Smith turned out to be a priceless time capsule from an era of opulence, extravagance, and sin, when men were dashing rogues, women seductive sirens, and the well off lived for ostentatious pleasure.

Had his ancestor actually been a made there, or was she an employee in such an establishment, a fille de joie?  John should have felt embarrassed thinking that, but instead he reacted with amusement and a bit of pride.  It came as a relief to learn that his unknown ancestor had not been some uneducated immigrant servant, nor had she been a drab turn-of-the-century housewife. It seemed like a positive thing that she could have been a flashy bad girl, one who had perhaps liked handsome men and pretty things.

As he and the guide went through the house, a strange certainty developed in his breast that Maddie must have been very attractive to have found work in an upscale brothel.  It came as no surprise that a harlot enjoying the high life would have given up her child for adoption.  John wondered what what Madeline Smith would have thought if she could have only knew that she would become an important branch on her family tree.  John himself thought that his life was unexciting, but something must have been responsible for the red-hot had blood that seemed to animate most of the family.  Maybe Grandma Rose had inherited her wild ways from having a shady lady for a mother.  With that possibility in mind, John closed his eyes and meditated on his exotic surroundings, trying to get the feel for the gay and wicked lifestyle that his progenitor had obviously flourished in. 

In all his genealogical research, John had never visited any building with such a powerful ambiance. The past seemed to vibrate in every drape, in every piece of furniture, the very paper on the walls.  Even the glittering sunlight on the windows evoked a kind of magic.  He found himself guessing -- usually correctly -- what was around each corner.  He got such strong impressions from what he saw that he started thinking about writing a novel about his fantasies about Maddie Smith. It seemed amazing that John felt such an identification about how cat-house girls lived so long ago.  John felt started to fantasize that he had actually visited this bordello in the past, perhaps as one of its rakish customers reincarnated.

Coming to an upstairs door, something made him stop in front of it.  John guessed -- knew -- what he would find behind the door that seemed to beckon him.  He lifted the latch and saw that he had been right!  It was a colorful bedroom done in the late Victorian style, preserved and renovated by the Historical Society.  He then made the leap of faith, though he couldn't say exactly why. In his gut he felt that this had been the very room where Great-granny once Maddie lived and worked.  In fact, if she had been been occupying up until the hour of the quake, she would have been the very last person to dwell there.  That might have been why he felt closer to Maddie inside that room than he felt anywhere else inside the cat-house.

When the guide went off to the restroom, John slyly checked out the closet, filled with the daring clothes of a sex-obsessed era.  Saloon girls in Technicolor Westerns had worn similar garments and he tried to imagine the living, breathing girl who could have done these colorful designs justice.  It filled him with pride to think that his own great-grandmother could have been that very girl.
  
It was then that John noticed the glint of a small bejeweled pin on a bed-stand.  The odd thing was that it was laying in the shadows, a place where there should have been no light for it to reflect.  It actually seemed to bit giving off it own light.  Was it part of the exhibit?  If so, why hadn't it been stolen any one of the many people who must have toured this room?

He picked it up; the jewelry felt warm and made his fingers tingle.  At the same time, he felt an enhanced impression of being elsewhere -- somewhere other than in his own time and place. And with that impression came the thought that Maddie Smith must have been a fun girl to meet.  "Great-grandmother," he suddenly murmured, "I wish I could have known you."

With those words, old-time music filled the house.  John turned, to find out its source, and found himself looking into the face of a beautiful young woman.  Her hair was blonde and wavy; she was wearing long gloves and an old-time corset, black and trimmed with red lace.  His first thought was that he'd run into a historical reenacter who was working here.  He opened his lips for an apology for his surprised stare, but just then he heard a man's booming yell, "Madeline!  Get back here!"  The shout had come from the hall outside, and John heard distinctly the mutter of many voices underneath that music -- ricky-ticky piano music from the Gay 90's.
 
As John continued to stare admiringly at the girl, he suddenly realized that he was in fact gazing into a mirror in front of him.  It was like he was looking at his own reflection, and that made no sense, not unless he was dreaming.  He leaned closer to the glass and the girl moved, too, pressing her face up close to his.  Amazingly, he thought he knew what she was thinking.  He hadn't had much contact with psychic science outside movies, but what he was experiencing was like a psychic link from the past. 

Was this a dream or not? When he experimentally touched the bedpost, it felt solid, not ghostly.  He next placed his palm against the cold, hard mirror glass and felt something that combined a cold-flash and an electric shock.  He staggered back and fell on the bed.  Looking up dazed from that position, he could see his feet and saw, to his amazement, a pair of silk-stockinged legs and a lower body that seemed to be wearing a lacy corset.  

He thought for a moment that the girl from the mirror had fallen into bed with him. He couldn't resist touching the bare thigh that looked so lovely, trying to reassure himself that there really was a girl under him and that the vision more than an illusion. What he felt was warm and soft.  But not only his hand felt the touch, but so did the leg, as if it were his own.  A second later he noticed that the arm that he had reached out with was not his own, but was slender and covered to the elbow by a black velvet glove.
  
At that moment, too, John realized that Madeline had not really been named Smith, but Dunbar -- a name that meant nothing to him.  Had she used a false name, like so many cat-house girls had done?  And why had that name leaped into his thoughts so strongly at a moment when he had so much else on this mind?  And why was John was sensing -- remembering actually -- other anomalous things that should have been no part of his own memories? He was envisioning faces of people whom he had never known but seemed like people whom he should be intimately aware of.     

"Get out here, Madeline," the man with the foghorn voice yelled again, "or I'll come in and drag you out by the hair!"
 
Jacob -- that loudmouth bastard, John thought.  But who was Jacob? he suddenly asked himself.  Something -- ancestral memory, perhaps -- seemed to be warning him that Jake was a bastard's bastard, a person that one didn't dare cross.  But, at the same time, John felt a profound impression of displacement, as if the year was 1905, not 2019.  What made him so sure of that?  Had Maddie's ghost reached out and made a psychic connection with him across more than a century of time?  

But it seemed much more than that. Without embarrassment, he could vaguely imagine that he was himself Madeline Dunbar. Another mad idea came to mind -- that he was, and always had been, the reincarnation of a cat-house girl in the Nineteenth Century. John had had erotic dreams before often enough before wasn't so straight laced that he couldn't  had enjoy them. But no earlier dream had ever thrilled him so much as this was was doing.

John, savoring the lifelike quality of this dream, ran his gloved fingers over himself.  He was till feeling a solid body, a warm body. This sensation should have been mind-blowing, but what he mostly felt was satisfaction.  Why did this exotic place suddenly feel like a welcome return home after a long absence?  The breast of the girl he was touching held a beating heart, he smelled perfumed air being drawn into his lungs, and he shivered a little from the draft coming in from a partially-open window and wafting over a good deal of exposed skin.

There came the sound of a shattering bottle and some raucous laughter from the hall.  The noise broke John's train of thought and gave rise to another thought -- a mad thought. What if he was not the reincarnation of one of Maddie Dunbar's customers, but of Maddie Dunbar herself?  With that thought came the impulse to meet the dream-people who were filling the corridor outside Maddie's door.  The trouble with lucid dreams, he knew, was that one woke up from them the instant that he realized  he was dreaming. He wanted this dream to continue longer.  He wanted to experience more of it.  He left the bed, born along gracefully by a pair of lovely, stockinged legs.  

Just before he opened the door, some whimsical instinct caused him to strike a pose, the sort of come-hither pose that he fancied some naughty girl of a hundred years ago would have assumed before she presented herself to a crowd of admirers.  He put his hand on his hip, stood straight, and raised his chin with pride. The smile that came to her lips was not planned; it seemed to come naturally to the jovial spirit that was animating her.  She was still wearing that alluring smile as she went out the door and and joined the crowd.

The tour guide returned to an empty room; John Roth was soon reported as a missing person.

END

The Spellcaster's Heiress -- Chapter 8

By Christopher Leeson 




FROM DYAN'S JOURNAL

During my first days in the Fyana, I found the men living by the maxim "to the bold goes the crown."  It validated what I knew intuitively and I stood by the rule after I was voted to the leadership.  By that same rule, I fought and died.  So did many of our comrades.  Boldness has its downside.

So does leadership.

The tactics of the Fyana could not mimic those of the standing army.  We lacked the weight of numbers to prevail in large-scale actions.  Likewise our scanty resources ruled out extended operations.  Instead, the Fyana made sudden thrusts against the enemy and then vanished before their reactive blow could be struck.  Our warfare became more like assassinations than set-piece  battles.  Courtliness fell by the wayside.  One the the earliest lesson that a new recruit learned was to stop being a gentleman and to fight as a scoundrel fights -- with ambushes and strikes from behind.  We told ourselves that anyone who would serve the usurper deserved it; that had to justify the harsh manner in which we fought them.

Fortunately, the Fyana didn't have to build its tactics from the ground up; the basics of such war-craft came from the occasional deserter with specialized skills, especially the Royal Rangers.  This was an elite troop that specialized in scouting, skirmishing, leading the enemy astray, and in covering retreats.

Our favorite opponent was the mercenary dastard who ran  when the first arrows flew.   Our band didn't have the luxury of paying curtsey to a valiant chancellor's man.  If he survived, he could become a rallying point for fainter hearts, thereby increasing our casualties.  Whenever possible, we marked the stouthearted warriors for death, trying to drive home the lesson that only those who fled or surrendered lived.  

If an opposition hero fell into our hands, our idea of mercy was to send him back to Harouck in humiliation, so that he would become a laughing stock instead of a leader.  Sometimes that ploy wasn't feasible, so we would instead offer a brave fighter the choice of losing his right hand or losing his head.  Some of best of them chose to lose their heads.  It was an ugly war and it turned warrior's hearts ugly, too.

Between gatherings, each man had to be his own commander, dependent upon his own ingenuity.  To stay together in a cohort would have depleted the poor march lands that we inhabited .  Worse, a multitude, either in camp or on the move, would have left behind so much spoor that even a mediocre tracker could have followed us.  For safety’s sake, men separated after each foray.  

We foraged for our own supplies and lived by our wits.  Fugitive life damaged the character of many a man, but it also made him watchful, alert, and self-reliant.  Such a one seldom lost his head and was usually equal to any emergency.  How easy it would have been to desert the Fyana between gatherings.  How surprisingly few men we actually lost in that way.

Still, we had taken casualties.  Too many of them.  When a fighting men shares one's own cause, when men live so interdependently, it is easy to regard a comrade-in-arms as a brother.  And it was our lot to mourn fellow warriors as dead brothers.

*****

Bannog Tower

The Spellcaster's Heiress -- Chapter 7

By Christopher Leeson

 
FROM DYAN'S JOURNAL

"How long does your family have?" Elekta had asked me during our flight north.

"Until the eve of Cernunog's feast day, Lady," I answered gloomily.

"Cernunnog's Eve?  Are you certain?"

"All I know is rumor.  May the gods grant that that we have at least that much time."

She was frowning off into the distance.  "It is strange.  People call Cernunog's Eve the 'Dark of the Demons.'"
 
"It's an unlucky night," I agreed.

She nodded.  "The god allows the spirits of the Netherworld to roam free on that date.  Wise people keep to their homes from dusk to dawn."

I knew that to be true.  I sometimes wondered why a deity so honored by men would choose to plague the human race once each year. 

Cawdour had once explained it this way:  Cernunnog is the warden who keeps the evil of the Netherworld at bay.  But because mankind is forgetful of its blessings whenever he deceives himself that these blessings are just the natural order of things, the god withholds his protection in order to teach them otherwise.  In that way, Men were informed that the gods are real and their role as Man's protectors is pivotal.  Wretched would be mankind’s lot if the gods ever forsook them.

Lady Elekta was speaking again.  "You’re saying that Harouck has marked hundreds -- men, women, and children alike -- to die upon the most evil night of the year?"

"That is so, my lady.  It does seem ominous."
 
"I have talked to priests and sorcerers.  "Some have suspected that Harouck's sorcery is of the vilest kind.  If his real intention is to turn a political execution into a holocaust to the Ancient Gods, the Fumorau, the world is far more out of order than we have supposed.  With such a sacrifice, a dark wizard might even strike a bargain with Brys, the Dark-Robed Man, or another demon of his ilk."

I looked askance.  "Are you serious, Lady?"

"Very serious, Sir Knight.  If that man is truly courting the favor of the greater demons, our civilization might not survive to his downfall!  His true war might be aimed at the gods themselves."
 
*****

The Standing Stones

Thanks All (Especially Christopher)

While not exactly a rousing success, I'd say this blog's been pretty successful for how little content there is for it. 

Hopefully things will change in the coming year. 

Heh, I made a TF pun!

Special thanks go to Christopher Leeson for keeping it going during the lean months. 

The Spellcaster's Heiress -- Chapter 6

By Christopher Leeson 

FROM DYAN'S JOURNAL

Once we had entered the kingdom of Sulidir, it occurred to me to ask the Lady Elekta about Cawdour's medallion -- the one that he had swallowed before my astonished eyes.

"Did he ever talk to you about it?" she inquired.

"Only that it focused his magic, and also that he preferred it to a wand because it left his hands free.  He said I was to have it; he wanted me to claim it once he was dead."

The lady nodded.  "Yes, you will need Cawdour's mandala or something like it.  An item of such power will resist any claimant who has not received it by gift from its former owner.  You should get possession of it as soon as possible."

I stared into her still-handsome face.  "It must have been buried with him!"

"I'm very sorry."

I realized what she was suggesting.  I revolted at the thought of robbing a grave, especially that of a man whom I had honored on a level with my own father.

"It is ironic," Elekta added.

"What?"

"That the medallion should be emblazoned with the sun on one side and the moon on the other.  One symbolizes the energies of the male, while the other acknowledges the energies of the female. He told me that the mandala could serve either a man or a woman, but I now wonder how it will perform when the user is both…."  

She then frowned thoughtfully.  "I wonder whether it is only accidental, this dual sexuality of both you and the medallion.  Fate may have placed the thing into Cawdour's hands only that he should be its caretaker, abiding the time when...another would come into her own.  An item so powerful will always seek out the spellcaster most worthy of it."

*****

A Name for the Goddess